Railway digs reveal exotic past

London 55million years ago: fringed with coral reefs and sandy beaches

A palm-fringed paradise of the East, a sub-tropical Garden of Eden stretching from West Ham Park to Hackney Wick.

Yes, we are talking about London - Stratford, E15 to be precise. But if you rush there this weekend to luxuriate on sandy beaches or marvel at the coral reefs of Romford Road, you will find you're a little late. About 55.5 million years late.

It is that long ago that the area boasted swaying palm trees, warm, shallow waters, sparkling corals and exotic fish.

The discovery of Stratford's past climate - similar to today's South China Sea - is revealed today by the Natural History Museum. In the largest find of its kind for more than a century, palaeontologist Dr Jackie Skipper uncovered fossils of oysters, exotic plants, sea shells and corals.

"A nice, warm, shallow sea covered the area," said Dr Skipper. "Turtles and sharks swam in the waters, which had coral reefs as rich as those now found in the Red Sea.

"Then, 55.5 million years ago, a comparatively sudden change occurred to our climate - although only slightly faster than global warming today.

"Over about 1,000 years, temperatures soared and the sea began to recede, leaving a sub-tropical landscape of sandy beaches and lapping waters."

In a site dug up for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, Dr Skipper found fossilised palm trees, the teeth of four species of shark and banks of shells.

During the earliest period from which the fossils date much of north-west Europe was under a shallow sea, with probably only the Midlands, the West Country and Scotland above water level.

But as the sea receded, strange animals strolled across what is now the capital, including the diatryma, a fierce flightless bird two metres tall. A thousand years later Stratford turned into a desert as volcanoes erupted in Scotland.

Dr Skipper was able to obtain such a total picture of east London's past life because the Natural History Museum's Department of Palaeontology keeps close watch on all major excavations around the capital.

She found the fossils in a vast chasm excavated for the rail link, for which the museum is adviser on geological strata. Large enough to accommodate the two boring machines that are working east and west of Stratford, the hole is four storeys deep and more than a kilometre long, providing fossils in "pristine condition".